Two mattresses side by side look like one bed. But at night they slide apart, and whoever sleeps in the middle ends up in the gap. Here's the truth most bed stores skip: you don't fix that gap by filling it. You fix it by holding the mattresses together.
It happens at home, and it happens in hotel rooms where two twin beds are pushed together for a couple.
Holding them together is what Dutch inventor Daniël Nieuwlaat set out to do. Can a bed bridge turn two twin beds into a king? His short answer: yes, if both mattresses are the right size.
A hotel room in 2007
He ran into the problem himself. In 2007 he spent a weekend at a hotel in the Netherlands, and the bed in his room was two mattresses. He and his girlfriend wanted to watch TV together in the middle, but the mattresses slid apart.
He pushed them back once, and saw it was pointless. They slid apart so easily that he would have spent the whole evening pushing them back. So they each slept on their own mattress.
"Watching TV together was already impossible," he says. "And sleeping close together in the middle of the bed later on was out of the question."
The next morning, in the shower of that same hotel, the idea hit him. "Those mattresses had to be tied together. Putting something between them makes no sense."
What the bed stores offered
Back home, bed stores told him to make the bed with one double mattress cover. He already had one, and the gap was still there. Then they showed him anti-slip mats and foam bridges.
"An anti-slip mat doesn't hold your mattresses together either," he says. "It just delays the problem."
Made at his mother's sewing machine
His first prototype came together at his mother's sewing machine, with two tension straps from the hardware store and an old mattress cover.
The cover stretched and bunched into a kind of rope. It held the mattresses together, but it wasn't comfortable to lie on.
A cotton duvet cover worked. "It didn't look pretty yet," he says. "But it worked, and at that moment that was what mattered most."
He didn't have two mattresses at home, so his sister tested it. "Before, I'd sometimes end up on the slats between the mattresses," she says, "when I wanted to lie close to my husband." That stopped.
Seven years of four-hour days
His family and his girlfriend didn't think it was a good idea. Between his studies and jobs, some of them abroad, he had about four hours a day left. "Those four hours are yours, and that's also when you have to shower," he says.
A tailor sewed the first ones, and he sold them slowly on Marktplaats, the Dutch classifieds site. The first buyer had struggled with sliding mattresses for years.
"I jumped for joy. Even though I was almost invisible among all the listings on Marktplaats, someone had found me." In 2014 he went all in.
Built to be fixed and washed
When a cheaper replacement buckle sometimes broke, he sent every customer with a broken buckle a whole new Bedbinder. Then he invested in better buckles, now with a seven-year warranty.
Customers washed the band even when it wasn't washable, so he made it washable. One customer asked if it could unclip at both ends. He sent her a prototype, and it went into the next production run. "I listened to that customer."
From hotel rooms to homes
Today his biggest business customers are hotels in Italy, Germany, France and Spain, along with B&Bs in Italy. They want one room that works two ways: two twin beds for business travelers, one big bed for couples.
At home, the same strap keeps two mattresses together. A mattress strap, like the one from Bedbinder Deluxe, lies flat on top in the middle, with three straps underneath both mattresses. It takes 60 seconds to put on.
Will it fit your bed?
Measure both mattresses side by side. If they're 55 to 79 inches wide together and 6 to 14 inches thick, it fits. Two twin XL mattresses make the size of a king.
One big mattress has no gap, so it doesn't need a bed bridge. And if both the head and foot of an adjustable bed move, he doesn't recommend it.
Staying at a hotel or B&B where the mattresses drift apart? Ask the front desk: "Do you have something to keep the mattresses together, a Bedbinder from Bedbinder Deluxe?" Plenty of guests already ask.
He never did get to watch TV from the middle of that hotel bed. Now other couples can.
